In India, teachers are often used for a variety of work that has nothing to do with their core expertise. You'll find them manning election booths or collating data for census and other enumeration exercises. But now even students will not be spared from 'helping' the State, and the frontrunner in this novel development is Gujarat. The BJP-run state government has given a list of 82 'preferred' topics to universities for doctoral theses. The list includes central and state government programmes such as Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pet Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, and the Gujarat government's Kanya Kelavani, Gunotsav and MA Yojana. If PhD students don't find these topics tempting enough, then there are several others to choose from: Comparative study of Sardar Patel Awas Yojna and Indira Awas Yojana; Education of minorities A critical study; Gujarat: Good governance for growth, scientific management and development A critical study of existing pattern and future course policy suggestions (sic) and so on so forth. In other words, PhD candidates who are supposed to come up with their own topics after researching them well are now being nudged towards "pre-determined topics". So they really don't need to spend time on the process of arriving at a topic, it is already there on a platter. It is still not clear if this topic list will be linked to scholarships; a carrot-and-stick scheme to ensure that there are enough takers for these hopelessly boring topics. Defending the government's move, one of the V-Cs said that the information gathered by students will help the state rectify the loopholes in the development programmes. Those who argue on such lines have forgotten that analyses of government-run programmes are primarily the work of specific agencies and students cannot be forced to do the evaluation work, unless they opt to do